The cyrus-sasl package contains the Cyrus implementation of SASL. SASL is the Simple Authentication and Security Layer, a method for adding authentication support to connection-based protocols.

At application startup, libsasl and libsasl2 attempts to build a list of all available SASL plug-ins which are available on the system. To do so, the libraries search for and attempt to load every shared library found within the plug-in directory. This location can be set with the SASL_PATH environment variable.

In situations where an untrusted local user can affect the environment of a privileged process, this behavior could be exploited to run arbitrary code with the privileges of a setuid or setgid application. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2004-0884 to this issue.

Users of cyrus-sasl should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches and are not vulnerable to this issue.

4. Solution:

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied. Use Red Hat Network to download and update your packages. To launch the Red Hat Update Agent, use the following command:

up2date

For information on how to install packages manually, refer to the following Web page for the System Administration or Customization guide specific to your system: